[FRIAM] narrative

[glen]

Yeah, this is the problem with narrative. And the source of my complaint against science communicators like Huberman (and to some extent Hossenfelder, less so Collier and Farina). Even deeper, the source of my complaint against narrativity lies in my problem with visualization, projection, and dimension reduction ... even simulation writ large.

This paper:

Why language models collapse when trained on recursively generated text
https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.14872

seems to make the point in a hygienic way (even if ideal or over-simplified). We make inferences based on "our" (un-unified) past inferences, build upon the built environment, etc. In the humanities, I guess it's been called hyperreality or somesuch. Notice the infamous Catwoman died a few days ago.

It all (even the paper Roger just posted) reminds me of a response I learned from Monty Python: "Oh, come on. Pull the other one." And FWIW, I think this current outburst on my part spawns from this essay:

Life is Meaningless: What Now?
https://youtu.be/3x4UoAgF9I4?si=7uVDeiDQ8STTJtv7

In particular, "he [Camus] has to introduce the opposing concept—solidarity. This solidarity is a way of reconstructing mutual respect and regard between people in the absence of transcendent values, hence his argument for a natural sense of shared humanity since we are all forever struggling against the absurd."

On 1/7/25 09:40, steve smith wrote:
> Regarding Glen's article "challenging the 'paleo' diet narrative".   I'm sure their reports are generally accurate and in fact homo-this-n-that have been including significant plant sources into our diets for much longer than we might have suspected.  Our Gorilla cousins at several times our body mass and with significantly higher muscle tone live almost entirely on low-grade vegetation.    But the article presents this as if ~1M years of hominid development across a very wide range of ecosystems was monolithic?  There are still near subsistence cultures whose primary source of nourishment is animal protein (e.g. Aleuts,  Evenki/Ewenki/Sami)?
> 
> I'm a fan of the "myth of paleo" even though I'm mostly vegetarian.   I like the *idea* of living a feast/famine cycle and obtaining most of my nutrition from fairly primary/raw sources. Of course, my modern industrial embedding has me eating avocados grown on Mexican-Cartel owned farms and almonds grown in the central valley of California on river water diverted from the Colorado river basin.   <sigh>.

> On 1/7/25 06:21, glen wrote:
>> 
>> Archaeological study challenges 'paleo' diet narrative of ancient hunter–gatherers
>> https://phys.org/news/2025-01-archaeological-paleo-diet-narrative-ancient.html
>> 
>> Renee' convinced me to eat fried chicken the other night. ... Well, OK. She just put it in front of me and my omnivorous nature took over. Fine. It's fine. Everything's fine. But it reminded me of the fitness influencers and their obsession with chicken and [ahem] "protein". Then I noticed the notorious non-sequitur science communicator Andrew Huberman is now platforming notorious motivated-reasoning through evolutionary psychology guru Jordan Peterson. Ugh. And Jan 6 is now a holiday celebrating those morons who broke into the Capitol. Am I just old? Or is the world actually going to hell in a handbasket? Get off my lawn!
>> 


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